Customer Reviews

His Holiness

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While I enjoyed this book, I do feel that there is a vague sense of Catholic bashing going on. John Paul II is a remarkable man - a gift to the world in our lifetime, and although you may not agree with everything the man says, deep in your heart you know the man is right - we can be better than we are. The thing to remember is that the Pope is CATHOLIC. He is going to take the highest Catholic stance on matters of faith and morals. If the non-Catholics of the world don't like what he has to say, too bad. The Catholic Church can take it, and it will still be around long after the bashers and hate mongers are gone. Any change in the Church will take place over time, with much thought and prayer. Bernstein and Polito did a relatively well-balanced job in the beginning of the book, but then got into the politics and moral stances of the Church, and it is evident that they have their own opinions on these. I don't care what they think, and I don't think they have any business criticizing a church that (at least one of them) they don't belong to. John Paul II is a wonderful man, perhaps one of the most influential of this last half -century, and the most-gifted Pope the Church has ever had.

Bernstein and Politi's biography of the Holy Father, John Paul II, is informative and intriguing, but these secular journalists just can't resist the temptation to harp on the same issues the world has with the Catholic Church.

Bernstein and Politi explode the myth that John Paul I was murdered in a "Vatican conspiracy," but they cannot see past the conspiracy to spread calumny against the Pope of WWII, Pius XII. When speaking of John Paul II's life during the war and later of his work as Pope to improve relations between Catholics and Jews, Bernstein and Politi cannot resist slamming Pius XII for his alleged "silence" and "inactivity" in saving Jews, when the fact is that the Orthodox Jewish scholar Pinchas Lapide has estimated that Pius XII and the Catholic Church were responsible for saving over 800,000 Jews from the Nazis.

Then there are the attempts by Bernstein and Politi to flog the dead horses of artificial contraception, abortion, and women's ordination. Instead of acknowledging that John Paul II is merely witnessing to the two thousand year tradition of the Catholic Church in denouncing artificial contraception, abortion, and women's ordination as incompatible with Christianity, these supposedly objective journalists attempt to psychoanalyze the Holy Father. According to these two, instead of upholding Catholic doctrine, the only reason the Holy Father condemns these things and at the same time reaffirms the sanctity of life and the holy vocation of motherhood is because he misses his mommy. Please! Of course the Holy Father's mother, Emilia Wojtyla, was an important influence on her son's life but this kind of amateur psychoanalysis on the parts of Bernstein and Politi is insulting not only to John Paul II but to those who already consider him John Paul the Great.

The authors' obviously liberal bias makes one question the rest of this biography's credibility and objectivity.

Among the many books written about Pope John Paul II, the book by Carl Bernstein and Marco Politi, His Holiness, stands out. That's because it's focus is on the role played by the Pope, working along with the Reagan Administration, in causing the fall of communism.

This was a delicate balancing act for John Paul. As Stalin so famously pointed out about a previous pope, he had no military power, only moral and spiritual power. As they recount his first trip as Pope back to Poland

"What was talking place now in Warsaw's Victory Square was a breakthrough to unknown horizons. John Paul II never uttered a word that might lead directly to a confrontation between Church and state, between the party and Christian believers, but everything he said marked the beginning of a grand turnabout for the Church -- in Poland, in Eastern Europe, in the Soviet Union, in world affairs. Through him the Church was laying claim to a new role, no longer simply asking space for itself. Through him it was demanding respect for human rights as well as for Christian values, respect for every man and woman and for the autonomy of the individual. These demands represented a direct assault on the universal pretensions of Marxist ideology, which by now had become an empty shell in the countries under Soviet influence."



A campaign just by Solidarity, even aided by the Pope, may have gotten no farther than the Hungarians in 1956 or the Czechs in 1968. What was different now was that the West, especially the Reagan Administration in the US, and Margaret Thatcher's government in Great Britain, had moved away from detente and began to actively push back. John Paul II had similarly moved away from the Ostpolitik of Pope Paul VI. The book details the co-operation in intelligence between the US and the Vatican. It also provides, through Politburo minutes obtained by the authors, the futile attempts by the old men of the Kremlin, and later the unsuccessful attempts of the younger Gorbachev, to get the toothpaste back in the tube.

This book, which was released in 1996, was a five year collaboration between Carl Bernstein (best-known for his work with Bob Woodward in All the President's Men and The Final Days) and Marco Politi, who is both the dean of Vatican journalists working for La Repubblica and then Il Messaggero, and a former Moscow correspondent. Countering a criticism, over how do we know what was really said at private meetings recounted in these exposé books, this book is quite detailed in its sourcing. The authors conducted, and documented, a long series of interviews with the people involved, up to and including President Reagan. The participants are quoted directly, and a Sources section at the back of the book shows who said what.

The book probably would have done better focusing strictly on the East-West struggles, but it was extended to include both a short biography of John Paul II's early life, plus a critique in the latter part of the book of the theological controversies during John Paul's long reign (and there were still nine years to go after the book came out.) While I'm interested in having Carl Bernstein as a guide through some of the great political struggles of the late 20th century, I really don't need him as a theology teacher.

While this isn't a new book, it is an interesting retrospective on one part of John Paul II's papacy.

I started off really liking this book. The coverage of the Pope's early life up until his ascencion to the throne was very interesting and pretty well-done. Once he got to the papacy, there were two significant problems. First of all, there were whole sections that dealt with the CIA and other government agencies and didn't talk about the Pope very much. More troubling was what the authors did to the story after the fall of communism. It was like a totally different book. The immediately began using words like "angry" and "snapped" and "reactionary" and "militant" to describe the Pope's stand on moral issues. After championing him as a her in the fight against communism, they made him seem like a grumpy old man who can't keep up with the times when he dared to take a firm stance against abortion or the ordination of women priests. I threw the book away when I was done. Be smarter than me and don't buy it in the beginning!

Carl Bernstein and Marco Politi, investigative journalist, argue that Pope John Paul II and President Ronald Reagan conspired to hasten the collapse of Soviet Communism. Some of the evidence they cite includes the CIA's support of the Polish Solidarity Movement and the sharing of American military intelligence with the Pope.

There is a brief history of Pope John Paul II's life and his ascendancy to the Seat of Peter. The coverage of the Pope's early life up until his ascension to the throne was very interesting and pretty well done. And we get a brief look inside of the Vatican's political apparatus. Even though I felt that there appears to be an anti-Catholic agenda in the later half of the book, it is worth reading. John Paul II was a gift to the world in our lifetime whose main message was that we could be better than we are. The author seems to forget that the Pope is Catholic first and last. He always did take the highest Catholic stance on matters of faith and morals as would be expected of a pontiff. I found this an interesting and fast read.

Carl Bernstein and Marco Politi have written an excellent portrait of Karol Woytyla - both the man and the pope. The authors are objective about John Paul II's world vision, triumphs, shortcomings and place in history while being respectful at the same time.

"His Holiness" is not for those enthralled by the now deceased Woytyla's charisma who may interpret critically objective discourse as being anti-Catholic. The book fairly chronicles Woytyla's clashes with feminists both inside and outside the Church, his critical view of the values of the richer, "decadent" Western nations, and his attempts to crush all who did not share his viewpoints on Church doctrine.

The authors hint that Woytyla may have been reexamining his stance on the role of women and papal infallibility in the last years of his papacy. But the book was published in 1996. In it the authors note: "A principal problem facing John Paul II's papacy continues to be democracy in his own house.... (C)an a pope who championed democratic rights in Poland and all over the world continue to run the Church as an absolute monarchy?" I sincerely wish the authors will return to examine the last nine years of Woytyla's life.

I have never agreed on Woytyla's policies on contraception, divorce, the role of women in the Catholic Church, homosexuals and papal infallibility. But there is no question in my mind that the man was brilliant; his achievements were monumental in upholding the dignity of the human being, in fighting for freedom, and in reconciling with the world's other great religions.

And his constant, well publicized travels served a critical need. As the authors write:

"His very presence in the most desolate parts of the world provided a spark of hope for people in misery. For men and women trapped in the shantytowns and barrios of the Third World, the arrival of John Paul II sometimes offered the first significant testimony to their existence as human beings, the only time in their lives when their wretched living conditions were presented to the court of public opinion in their own countries and around the world."

Pope John Paul II "The Great"? Yes, without a doubt.

Pope John Paul II "the saint"? I'm not so sure.

It is not for me to sit on judgement on the present or any other Pope. Having read this book however, I think that humanity everywhere on earth should be grateful to God the Almighty that we have had such a capable person as Pope for the last 20 years. He has accomplished so much in every continent despite all difficulties, opposition fronm all quarters, and despite ,even, attempts on his life. His courage and faith are really magnificent--he is an inspiration to us all. Ad multos annos, I say

I usually do not read many biographies, as they tend to be somewhat dry or either too skimpy or way too much. However, this one I really enjoyed. I highly recommend reading it for either a good biography or to learn more about Catholics and Pope John Paul II. The only, only thing I can find fault with is the ending. It seemed a bit cut off, and I almost wanted to find the words "The End" because I just didn't feel like it ended. But then again, I find my ears perk up whenever I hear about the pope, in a chance to learn more about Pope John Paul II, or simply Karol Wojtyla.

The Church changing her teachings regarding artificial contraception and other LIFE issues is like an engineer saying "well, its time to change that pesky law of gravity." Bernstein is more interested in his ideology than the life of Pope John Paul II. For a more balanced, scholarly, and less agenda driven biography of the Holy Father, look up George Wiegel. Don't waste your time with these hacks.

It is just too difficult to sort out the ideological agenda of the author from the facts. Bernstein utterly fails to understand one of the most interesting people of our time. This book has all the trappings of a serious work but when I read about the Pope I want to know what inspired the man. This tedious chronological and "investigative" work fails to provide that and thus we are left with a very boring read.